I reach the second book of the Serbian stop in Peter world series. Filip David has been a big name in Balkan fiction for a number of years. Forming a circle of writers first in Sarajevo then later in Belgrade where he opposed the Serbian leader Milosevic at the time. He also worked on the radio dramas til getting sacked for starting a trade union. This book won the NIn Book prize (Like the Serbian Booker prize ) when it came out in 2014.

My father was distantly related to the famous Houdini, whose real name was Erik Weisz. He was one of Rabbi Mayer Weisz’s six children. The great illusionist became famous or his escape acts from locked spaces and chains, displaying skills that verged on the impossible. My father often joked, although later said quite seriously, that this was a legacy shared by all the weiszes.

One of my fathers close relatives was named erik after the celebrated escapologist. He was one of the few members of the Weisz familyto have survivied the Holocaust, although later he disappeared without a trace. According to unconfirmed rumours he finished up in a mental asylum.

THe family connection to the escapologist and Alberts own tale of escape.

This book is a fictional action of a Holocaust survivor Albert Weiss and his story. He is set on this path when in the present he visited an exhibition with a pair of rooms about the holocaust. He then recounts his life and his survival in how his parents died he was brought up by another couple. After he was thrown out of a train on its way to the death camp. The true story of the Serbian jews told in many tales of Albert Weiss and his life. Old man remembering in a world where news is so fast it is forgotten. This is told in the snippets of stories some forgotten some connected to the past like discovering the brains evil centre. A birth of a devil baby shows the horror and death still walk hand in hand as panic grabs people in Columbia. All this as Weiss lives his life in New York, but still hears the clatter of that train on the rails as he head as a six-year-old child to the Death camp but out of this came his rebirth.

Albert shuts his eyes. That is how you become invisible. That is the incredible trick his father used to talk abpout. One worthy of the celbrated relative hounini, the greatest escape artist of all time.

“This world of ours is not exactly the most perfect place to live in ” his father used to say “When you find yourself in trouble, just shut your eyes and wait ”

His famous relative and also the fathers words he remembers are touching and sad!

Susie from Istros compared this book to those of Dasa Drndric, They both share a sense of collective loss of the Jewish voice in the Balkans and also both serve as warnings. The David with its reflections of the current news and Dasa in her most recent book translated into English which shows a man looking back at how much the world had changed in recent years. We are forgetting more than remembering the past these days. Also, there is a feeling of the past become trivial like the news piece on the painter using Holocaust ashes to paint with. A point Topol touched on in his book The Devil’s Workshop about wanting to make a Disneyland like death camp experience. This is a testament to the Serbian jews that died and those who survived like David himself who was a survivor.

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I really admired Dasa Drndric’s Trieste (I can’t say I liked it, it was too shocking for that) so I’ll look out for this one too. I think it’s true that we tend not to think of Balkan Jews because the focus tends to be on the Poles…